elemental cloud computing
intentional cloud watching - by brenda michelson
On Friday, David Linthicum invited me on his cloud computing podcast to chat about what we heard, and didn’t hear, at the Cloud Connect conference. Naturally, our discussion wound its way to the connections of cloud computing, enterprise architecture, service-oriented architecture and data architecture.
Our podcast is Picking Apart Cloud Connect. Check it out.
In response to yet another mainstream press bungling of “cloud and cloud computing”, Lori MacVittie offers a clear and concise cloud computing delineation: “Users use Applications. Applications use clouds.” Lori expands on this point:
“Cloud computing is not a synonym for cloud. And vice-versa. Cloud computing is perhaps the first case of “technology for technology’s sake” that is actually a good thing. That’s because cloud computing is for applications. It’s not for users, it’s for applications. A cloud computing environment without an application is pretty much useless. A dynamic collection of compute resources that remains unfulfilled, idly spinning disks and catching CPU interrupts willy nilly without purpose.
Users, i.e. consumers, never really interact with a cloud computing environment, they interact with an application. Many folks identify SaaS (Software as a Service) as “cloud” because many of the properties associated with cloud computing – scalability, multi-tenancy, on-demand usage and dynamic adjustment to capacity – are inherently part of the offering. That may – or may not – be because the underlying infrastructure on which those applications are deployed is, in fact, a cloud computing infrastructure.”
“…Let’s say that again: an application is not “a cloud”, its supporting infrastructure and environment are “a cloud.” An application may be a cloud-based application or service, but it is never, ever a “cloud” itself nor are you using “cloud computing” by simple virtue of accessing that application. You are using an application, the application is using cloud computing.”
After a much appreciated reference to my cloud-o-gram, Lori continues with an analogy to the SOA-world:
“A “cloud” is really an architecture that exhibits particular characteristics (on-demand, multi-tenant, rapid elasticity, resource pooling) that enable applications deployed atop that architecture to appear “infinitely scalable.” Saying an application is or is not cloud is like saying an application is or is not SOA. The application may leverage a SOA, it may be comprised of services (a “composite application”) but it is not SOA. It can’t be because SOA is an architecture, a design and deployment model, a means of interaction between services.”
So, the next time you witness cloud / cloud computing bungling, repeat after Lori: “an application is not “a cloud”, its supporting infrastructure and environment are “a cloud.””
Salesforce.com just added a powerful new tool to its Force.com development platform, a Visual Process Manager:
“The Visual Process Manager brings the power of Cloud Computing to Business Process Apps. Now you can visually draw any business process and instantly deploy it in the cloud with no code, no software and no infrastructure. The Visual Process Manager helps companies easily automate specific business process like call center scripting, sales quotes, and new employee on boarding.”
According to a post on TechCrunch:
“The technology powering the Visual Process Manager is based on technology acquired from Informavores, call scripting startup Salesforce bought last year.
The Manager has several different components. The Process Designer essentially helps businesses more >>
In IBM’s November 2009 SOA Newsletter, Fill Bowen, Program Manager responsible for Smart SOA in IBM Software Group, discusses the relationship between SOA and Cloud Computing, and shares prerequisites for providing services in a cloud and consuming services in a cloud.
The newsletter emphasizes that SOA and Cloud Computing are complements. SOA is an architectural style, while Cloud Computing is a deployment model. These concepts can come together in the design of the cloud computing environment:
"’SOA is an architectural style for building applications, loosely coupled, allowing composition,’ says Jerry Cuomo, CTO of IBM’s WebSphere business. ‘Can we build a datacenter infrastructure on SOA principles? Yes, and that’s the cloud, so it’s a service-oriented infrastructure,’ he adds. ‘It’s taking that architectural principle of SOA and applying it to an infrastructure.’" – InfoWorld, “The cloud-SOA connection”
In discussing the SOA-Cloud Computing relationship, Fill offers a helpful analogy using books and a library:
“An interesting analogy for cloud and SOA is to think of books in a library. The books represent the services that customers can access once the library acquires them, and the library building represents the cloud where people come to check out the books/services. Books are reusable, and several books might make up a series or topic. Someone writes the book once and it is reused many times.
Using our analogy of books in the library, there are two components to consider when thinking about services in a cloud environment. One is the providing of services (books) to the cloud (library). And the other is the consuming (checking out) of those services (books). Each has different requirements.”
Read the article to learn of the prerequisites for providing and consuming services in a cloud.
[Disclosure: IBM is not a direct client of my firm, Elemental Links, however IBM is a founding sponsor of the SOA Consortium, which is a client.]
Next week, I’m attending Gartner’s Application Architecture, Development & Integration Conference (AADI) in Vegas. I’ll be splitting my time amongst SOA, Cloud Computing and Event Processing sessions. I haven’t built my agenda yet, but I’ll definitely be at the SOA Consortium end-user panels on Cloud Computing Use Cases and SOA Success Stories.
When possible, I’ll be blogging and tweeting from the sessions. The conference twitter hashtag is #gartneraadi.
If you are attending and want to connect on SOA, Cloud Computing, SOA & Cloud Computing and/or Event Processing, please send me an email, or ping me on Twitter.
In February, as I began my cloud watching in earnest, I wrote the following:
“Only time will tell if my cloud watching is attention well spent. If the cloud is indeed "the future of the Internet", then yes. If the cloud is merely a repackaging of everything that we already do, then no. Most likely, the cloud’s promise falls somewhere in between, landing closer to the future than the past.”
Since then, of course, I’ve launched Elemental Cloud Computing, which some have interpreted as a now bullish position on cloud computing. That would be a misinterpretation. more >>
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